Report to Grego (56 page)

During those difficult days when I was toiling against my nature to surpass my odious self and to take pains to relieve human suffering, a surpassingly noble example of sacrifice and love came to my mind—it seemed as though he wished to show me my way. I recalled something he said one day: “We must always heed the cry of a man who calls for help.”

When I first entered Assisi's narrow lanes during my pilgrimage to Italy and heard the bells ringing cheerfully (it was vespertime) from the campanile of the Church of Saint Francis, the poor man of God, and from the tiny Convent of Saint Clare, I felt inexpressibly happy. Staying at the palazzo of the elderly Countess Erichetta, I remained in this holy city for many months, not wanting to leave. Now, in these difficult days when my soul was fighting to rise a little higher, my heart opened and out rushed Assisi. The ragged, barefooted son of Bernardone rose up into the light during
these critical days, stepped in the lead, and indicated my road with his hand. It was not a road, it was a rocky, precipitous ascent. But the air all about bore the sweet fragrance of sainthood.

I remembered the cloudy day when I climbed della Verna, the mountain of Francis's martyrdom and glory. A strong, icy wind was blowing; the rocks were gray and bare, devoid of grass, the barren trees all black. The region groaned cheerlessly, tormented and harsh—nothing but poverty, bareness, and desolation. Darkness was approaching, the light sparse and lusterless, and the summit still loomed high above me. I tried in vain to concentrate my desire and invoke all my strength, sensing a panic taking hold of my frozen, famished body, which was about to be benighted in this wilderness. Then suddenly the miracle took place. This inhuman, unflowering region around me seemed to have been displaced, seemed to have mounted the mystic step which all reality secretly yearns to mount, and I sensed that here about me was poverty—Franciscan poverty—harsh toward the body, merciless toward man's agreeable habits and his slothful, so exceedingly declivous pleasures.

It was this selfsame saint who mortified his flesh, denied the pleasures of the five senses, and threw ashes upon his food when he felt the inner devil of gluttony licking his chops. He plunged into icy streams in the heart of winter, kept vigils at night, went hungry and cold—tormented his body of clay so excessively that, pitying it on his deathbed, he turned and said, “Forgive me, Brother Ass, for I tormented you very much.”

But this poverty was Franciscan, that is to say, certain of its wealth, of the mystic springtime it was preparing and the warm fruit-laden summer concealed within. Suddenly the starkly bare mountain of Verna laid itself open in my mind on this evening; it became the exquisite landscape of our inward paradise, verdant, fragrant, covered everywhere with bees and butterflies, and I began now to climb the metamorphosed mountain again and to shout, “Be thou blessed, Sister La Verna! Sister Poverty!”

Spring came. How could I possibly leave? I was happy living opposite the little Convent of Saint Clare, in the palazzo of the old Countess Erichetta, who was so pervaded by Franciscan joy and grace. Never had I experienced the identity between Saint Francis and the spring so deeply, for of the three great Franciscan
precepts of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, none is so completely in harmony with Francis's pure, forever renascent soul as the great springtime precept of Chastity. Springtime in any other region would have awakened man's charmed, nostalgic soul to the memory of youth, and a woman he loved, and his tiny daughter; it would have generated resentment: why should nature be renascent while men found it impossible to recapture their youth. It would have made man's soul envy the mountains and valleys because they “await not death, nor know old age.” Spring in Assisi, however, necessarily and cheerfully assumes the form of Francis. This Umbrian soil, the soil that had the good fortune to produce such a fruit, grows broader and richer; it ushers in a twofold, threefold spring in which every Assisian flower, without in any way losing its happy destiny, is elevated into a sacred symbol of the blossoming of the human soul.

Francis was one of the first, the first consummate flower to rise out of the discord-tilled winter of the Middle Ages. His heart was simple, happy, and chaste; his eyes, like those of children and great poets, always saw the world for the first time. Francis must have often gazed at an insect, a simple flower, a spring of water, and found his eyes flooding with tears. What a sight this is, he must have thought to himself, what joy, what divine mysteries are flowers, water, and insects! After so many centuries, Francis was the first to see the world with virgin eyes. All the heavy, unwieldy scholastic armor of the Middle Ages fell away, and body and soul remained naked, delivered over to all the shivers of spring.

I visited Assisi a second time a few months later, unable to keep myself away. The Umbrian plain with its abundant vineyards, fig plantations, and olive groves was laden with fruit now. I walked across it, proceeding by myself once more from village to village, enjoying the splendidly fruitful soil in mute tranquility: the sacred, fecund earth which had borne the pain of plow and spade with silent resignation, and now was reclining restfully and contentedly, its lap overflowing with fruit. You sensed that it was content and tranquil because it had done its duty. Bound to eternal laws, passing with confidence and patience through all the stages of meditation and suffering, it had achieved this rich autumn harvest of its virtue.

Suddenly, without any conscious effort, I found myself once
more experiencing the profound meaning of Obedience, the third fundamental Franciscan precept. To obey a harsh signal and abandon ourselves with confidence to the high forces around and within us, visible and invisible, unshakable in our faith that these know everything and we nothing—this is the one and only road to fertility. All the others are sterile and deceptive, because they do not lead anywhere, but simply bring us back to the miserable, accursed self after vain and presumptuous meanderings.

Thus it was that Francis rose again from this land he so adored. I saw him lying on the ground just as on that dawn when the friars discovered him couched on the soil of Saint Clare's garden, chanting the praises of sun, fire, water . . . and dying. He was happy. He had bound himself to eternal law, filled his hands with fruit, and like a good worker, was returning to his Lord.

During those months when I wandered through Assisi's lanes and outlying fields, or gazed at the paintings in the Poor Man's great palazzo, I remember that I kept struggling to experience such a spring and autumn myself, as far as I was able to. What insatiable, unsubmitting years of youth those were! Each morning, joyous and despairing, I went out at the break of dawn to roam this sacred region. I felt what every young man must feel, what must have been felt by the Spartan lad who held the fox next to his bare flesh and neither spoke nor screamed though his body was being torn apart—he suffered, proud in the knowledge that he had succeeded in mastering his pain.

Without my so wishing, however, my face doubtlessly must have divulged my struggle and pain, because one morning as I was leaving the city through the Saint Clare gate, I was stopped by a thin, lanky man whose blond hair had begun to turn gray. Though I had often seen him roaming like myself through this region which attracted so many pilgrims, we had never exchanged a word. We simply smiled politely at each other whenever our paths crossed, and continued on without speaking—treading more lightly, in a way of speaking, as though neither wished to disturb the other's solitude and tranquility.

But this morning the unknown stranger halted, looked at me, and after hesitating a moment, asked, “Would you like to walk together a little?”

“Yes, I would.”

After we had proceeded a few paces, I said to him, “I'm from Greece. I came to Assisi and fell in love with Saint Francis.”

“I'm from the other end of Europe,” replied the stranger. “From Denmark. I too fell in love with Saint Francis. I have been living for years here in Assisi, unable to leave him. My name is Jorgensen.”

I gave a start. “The one who wrote the brilliant book about Francis?”

Jorgensen smiled bitterly and nodded. “Who can ever do justice to Saint Francis? Not even Dante. Do you know the eleventh canto of the
Paradiso?”

I was delighted. Those very days I had developed an overwhelming love for this canto, and as I took my solitary walks through Assisi's streets or the surrounding countryside, I often murmured its opening lines:

O insensate care of mortals,

How false are the arguments which

Make thee downward beat thy wings!

Together we began to recite the marvelous Italian, suddenly united in brotherhood beneath the great wing of poetry. We took the high road above the ravine with its lavish vineyards and olive groves. The sun had risen now, lighting the world and filling it with long-sweeping shadows. We remained silent for quite some time. Finally my companion turned to me and asked, “Why do you love Saint Francis?”

But he immediately regretted what he had done. “Forgive me,” he said. “I have been indiscreet.”

“I love him for two reasons,” I replied. “First, because he is a poet, one of the greatest of the pre-Renaissance. Bending over even the most insignificant of God's creatures, he heard the immortal element they have inside them: melody.”

“And second?” asked Jorgensen.

“Second, I love him because by means of love and ascetic discipline his soul conquered reality—hunger, cold, disease, scorn, injustice, ugliness (what men without wings call reality)—and succeeded in transubstantiating this reality into a joyous, palpable dream truer than truth itself. He discovered the secret so sought
after by medieval alchemists: how to transubstantiate even the basest metal into pure gold. Why? Because for Francis the “philosopher's stone” was not something inaccessible and external to man which could be found only by throwing natural laws into confusion; it was his own heart. Thus, through this miracle of mystical alchemy, he subdued reality, delivered mankind from necessity, and inwardly transformed all his flesh into spirit. Saint Francis, for me, is the great general who leads the human flocks to unconditional victory.”

“Is there nothing else?”

“I know what you want to ask me,” I replied. “No, nothing else. General and poet—nothing else.”

We fell silent again, but soon Jorgensen remarked, “That is not enough.” Though he started to raise his hand as though wishing to touch my shoulder and soothe me on account of his blunt declaration, he held it in mid-air and repeated even more decisively this time, “No, that is not enough.”

I was going to respond, but I restrained myself from fear I might say something rude.

“That is why your face appears so worried,” said Jorgensen, as though continuing a silent thought. “You are still struggling, you have not achieved deliverance, and this struggle day after day is exhausting you. This is the reason I stopped you this morning and spoke to you.”

“And supposedly you can help me in my struggle?” I asked in a voice which in spite of myself came out full of anger and irony.

I felt ashamed. Sometimes we speak before our souls have time to gain the upper hand over the body.

“Control yourself,” said Jorgensen. “I cannot help you. Every person has to find his own road and save himself. From what? From the ephemeral. Save himself from the ephemeral and find the eternal.”

Still irritated, I said, “Judging from your serene face, calm, sure gait, and ever-gentle tone of voice, you have already found your road. Doubtlessly you look upon the rest of us with sympathy, maybe even with condescension—the rest of us who are still struggling. Perhaps you were born privileged, with balanced faculties, and never knew any struggle.”

Jorgensen halted and glanced at me for a moment. Extending
his hand resolutely this time, as though to a drowning man, he seized me by the arm.

“You are still young,” he said. “I was young once, and I know. You are impatient, you still lack humility, you still will not deign to call for help. Allow me to tell you something: No, I was not born privileged. I know the meaning of anguish, struggle, and arrogance extremely well. When I was young like yourself, I had great satanic ambitions. I wrote novels full of sensuality, passion, and irony. In time, art became too constricting for me. Devoting myself to science, I turned into a fanatical advocate of Darwinism and every antichristian idea. I wanted to smash church, state, morality—all the shackles. At life's center I enthroned the self. ‘War against the age-old enemy,' I proclaimed. Age-old enemy was my name for God. I wrote, I made speeches everywhere; I ran and ran, banner in hand. But suddenly I halted and fell silent. An unforeseen and inexplicable malaise had begun to perturb my heart. I knew neither how it came nor whence—perhaps it was inside me all the while, awaiting its hour. Leaving Denmark in order to escape my friends and my old habits, I traveled to Germany, then came down to Italy and entered Assisi.”

He smiled.

“That was thirty years ago. The past thirty years I have spent here in Assisi, beneath Francis's shadow. God be praised!”

“And? . . .” I said, deeply moved. “I haven't read any of your other books—only
Saint Francis.”

“So much the better. I published an Itinerary in which I spoke (rather, tried to speak) of the emotion I felt at seeing the ancient cities with their castles, churches, paintings. . . . I'd gone before this to a Benedictine monastery, but it frightened me, and I left at once, the very next morning. Although the calm, beatific communion of cenobites seemed so sweet and attractive to me, so completely opposite to the life I had been leading, although it enabled me for the very first time to see which road leads to happiness, I hesitated to take this road. . . .”